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[quote=Anonymous]OP: for someone who works at a college, you seem to be missing a huge point about being a mentor.  If you (very admirably) want to help these kids be the first ones in their family to go to college— or help anyone make a major change,  you start by meeting them where they are. You know this.  You build trust over time.  And you slowly help them at their speed, step by step.  And you respect their wishes and values while you do so.

You seem to think that you can drag kids to your college, put them in t-shirts and take picture, tell them their life’s ambitions aren’t good enough and they should want something else and then get pissed of that you haven’t completely changed the trajectory of their lives in 72 hours.

Of course with time and energy and interest you could make a real difference in their lives. But, you would have to start by gaining their trust and making them like you and understanding where they were coming from.  And respecting what they want.  And you would have to do so in a way that didn’t demand they completely alter everything they had grown up believing in one weekend. 
It would take time and patience and you wouldn’t be constantly praised for your efforts. The reward would be seeing 1 or 2 of them become happy successful adults 15 years from now.  No matter what you do, 1 or 2 of them just might not choose college. And you would have to respect that. And then be there if they wanted help upgrading skills later.

And even that would work for you, because you don’t like these kids.

Actually mentoring isn’t about you.  Thanks for you. Appreciation for you. People praising you. It’s about making a connection with a child, creating a relationship and building on it.  It’s about the child, not you standing several states away judging the children as deficient and their upbringing as deficient and their dreams and goals as deficient and their manners as deficient.  I mean, do you like anything about them?

I’m pretty sure what you just did is convince three kids that the dead last thing they want is to attend college. [/quote]

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